[luketych]

I get annoyed when people stop a discussion dead in its tracks by asking for references like this, especially when they can easily look it up themselves if they actually cared about the answer rather than winning.

If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar. Hmmmm I wonder if this will fit into receptors in other places in the body, not just on the tongue. Maybe it will affect gut bacteria. Maybe even trigger other events within our bodies.

If we would stop and think with an open mind, many of these arguments would become discussions, and we wouldn't need to play the baby card by asking for proof.

Remember how long it took to finally get enough proof in order to show others how wrong our mainstream religions are? And even with all the evidence we have accumulated, still people say, "show me the proof. I'm a reasonable man." Bullshit.

Let's not fall into this trap again. Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science. We don't need to hit everything with the biggest hammer in our toolbox before we can move forward.

[apathy]

> If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose that you may not be a professional medicinal chemist.

Many theories conveniently support your position. Of course, many theories conveniently support the other side. How can we objectively determine who is right?

Well, let's look at (among many, many other experimental studies) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25786106 which is a recent study of metabolic differences between self-reported aspartame sensitive and non-sensitive individuals. Double-blind, randomised crossover study -- the gold standard. Any differences in metabolic profile between either control/aspartame or sensitive/not? None seen.

However, perhaps all non-nutritive sweeteners are not alike. The same senior author as above ran a separate study in a small sample of athletic males where aspartame in addition to carbohydrates resulted in lower insulin response during exercise: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-9...

Meanwhile, and in a different (grossly obese, NNS-naive) population, sucralose (Stevia) appeared to do the opposite: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc...

> Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science

Sure, if we don't care whether the answers are credible.

Proof by analogy is fraud. If we didn't need evidence to make decisions we wouldn't bother accumulating it.

[buu700]

> sucralose (Stevia)

s/Stevia/Splenda/ (stevia is entirely different from sucralose).

[apathy]

Oh wow I fucked that one up. Thank you for correcting it.

[jschwartzi]

I don't think "keeping an open mind" means accepting statements without evidence until they are debunked. Rather, it means that if evidence arises which contradicts your presuppositions, you must not ignore it.

But this all assumes there is evidence available. Is there?

[brianwawok]

Google it. There is data. Not beyond refute. It's enough that I don't touch artificial sweeteners. Don't need them in my life anyway.

[luketych]

What I am trying to say is that if we close our minds right away then we will miss obvious answers. We will tend to overcomplicate things and reach for our most-expensive tools.

I've read "scientific" articles that make use of the most cutting-edge statistical models in order to "prove" that something like "emotional intelligence does not correlate with success."

Ok, poor example, and I made it up. But there are many research articles out there that look impressive because of all the tools they throw at the problem. Under the surface these studies are bunk.

[apathy]

> Ok, poor example, and I made it up.

Why does this not surprise me?

Outside of mathematics, there really isn't anything resembling proof. There is the weight of the evidence, and the weight of any substantive critiques of bias in said evidence. That's about it.

> But there are many research articles out there that look impressive because of all the tools they throw at the problem. Under the surface these studies are bunk.

On this we can certainly agree. However, the replacement for a bad study is a well-designed study, not some statistical hocus pocus (1) or "going by your gut".

If your position is sound, there will (at some point) be someone bold and independently-funded enough to torpedo the status quo with a properly designed experiment. It may not happen as fast as you'd like. But there is nothing that academics like better than turning their rivals' sacred cows into hamburger. Of this I can assure you.

(1) I am a statistician, both professionally and by graduate training. I have no qualms about dismissing poorly designed studies regardless of post-hoc jiggery-pokery. A shiny autopsy won't reanimate the corpse of a dead experiment.

[luketych]

Again, you are cherrypicking any flaw you see and then attacking. For a logically-trained person you are misusing it. Being overly logical can become a negative when it is used to justify your already-held beliefs.

I do not care what you think at this point, this has already blossomed into a 1 vs 1, so anything said will just make both sides more justified in their position.

This is about onlookers. Hacker News is flawed in the same way that elections are flawed. Every user is given the same power of opinion. A losing strategy that will eventually begin to conform to the middle of the pack, condemning any opinions falling too far from the centre.

Apathy, I have to ask you. If you are getting all the votes, all the +1's, all the likes, would you ever think that maybe that is not a good sign?

[apathy]

I wouldn't say that HN is flawed the way elections are, because non readers aren't affected by what goes on here (I hope).

You logic strikes me as specious -- the proximity of an idea to the mushy middle is orthogonal to whether it is correct. Great ideas are often met with violent opposition -- but shitty ideas are, too. If I thought most people on HN were in fact dumbasses, as most of the electorate often seems to be, I would go somewhere else. It's the least worst forum (save perhaps Metafilter) I've found so it's a place where I go to procrastinate.

My job is to write, so my natural impulse when I see something that seems easily dismantled is to get in a bit of practice.

[luketych]

Well then you are getting better at applying logic blindly.

[asldjhcakjhc]

You can usually make up a bunch of conflicting stories about how some chemical will affect the body. For example, I could claim that there is an evolutionary basis for the body to assume that the taste of sugar means that food has been successfully obtained, and to react by being less conservative with calories, and reward us with a dopamine rush. Sounds like a great time to exercise!

Anyway, we can be lost in a sea of doubt with all our pet theories, or we can look at the available evidence.